[admin_only] Improvements

Enabling the server for more users (we can’t afford to be a regular mail system):

- Mail messages will be deleted after 1 week for managers not in holiday mode. I will only enable this in a couple days, so you guys have time to store your favorite messages using the next functionality
- You can re-send your favorite messages to your email one time. This will guarantee we will have no problems with deleted messages, as they should be stored in your personal email.
- You can send a maximum of 25 personal messages per tick

Changes on match engine to be applied in 2 days affecting teams that:
-use formations with no defenders on mentalities -1 or 0
-use formations where all defenders on mentatlities -1 and 0 are told to move forward to D +1 or M -1 using advanced tactics

Keepers from teams using a formation as described above will suffer a face-to-face effect on regular shots (not on headers). This means their keeping ability will be affected by their dribbling skill, using the following formula:

(keeping * 0.6 + speed * 0.4) * dribble / 100

The first part of the formula is what we already have now, the dribble portion is the face-to-face effect. If you have a keeper with 100 on his dribble skill you don’t have to worry about it.

The motivation for this change is that some teams have been successfuly using formations with no defenders and their keepers are not penalized for this lack of defense, which is unrealistic. I hope those using this kind of formation understand the need for this improvement in the match engine.

As announced 2 days ago, keepers now use dribble skill if your formation doesn’t have any defenders on mentalities -1 or 0. Get ready for a new goalkeeper announcement: control skill usage.

Currently this skill is completely useless to goalkeepers but Bruno Costa has helped us in finding a good way to use it. Control will be used to decide if the keeper catches the ball, deflects the ball or punch it to outside the field when he makes a good defense. Keepers with high control value will catch the ball more easily while those with poor control skill are more likely to deflect it. THISWILLNOTINFLUENCETHEKEEPERABILITY TO AVOIDGOALS, BUTINFLUENCETHEWAY HE MAKESTHESAVES.

Of course it’s not fair to add this rule right away, so it will be applied starting next season in FastTicker and mid-season in MediumTicker. Another enhancement will be added at the same time, giving goalkeepers the chance to catch a deflected ball before another player reaches it. As of now the keepers stand still, waiting for someone to get the ball :)

The logic responsible for completing your squad when there are missing or unavailable players has been changed for friendly matches. For those types of matches your worst players (in terms of main skill) are selected instead of the best, which makes more sense for friendlies. This also allowed us to make CPU teams play friendly matches against each other, even though they will still refuse friendly invitations against human managed teams.

The match report now contains the formation you’ve used for that match with a direct link to the formations page. You won’t see the formation used by your opponents. Old match reports where you used your default formation may be inaccurate if you have set another formation as default recently.

New player development system (it’s long but worth reading). The first part is a copy of what I posted in the “IMPORTANT – Player Improvement” topic, so if you’ve already seen it there you can jump right to the paragraph after the example.

-Coaching will be changed so that it does not influence how many skill points the player earns at once, but how often he improves
-When improving a player will earn from 1 to 5 skill points
-Different match types will give the player different amounts of experience points: 1 for friendlies, 3 for league and cup matches, 4 for UEFA Cup and Sudamericana, 5 for CL and Libertadores and 6 for Club World Cup
-In order to improve the player will need something around 15 to 60 points, depending on the coaching level and team division
-Second division youths will start at the same level as a first division youth. The difference between divisions will be the amount of points necessary for the next player improvement, as stated above
-Starting on 16 players will receive only part of their potential every year, 10% in the average so that their maximum can be reached around 25 years old. Of course there will be players receiving more or less potential per year allowing some to be young stars and some to reach their maximum near 30.
-Keepers will stop improving tackle and shooting while the other players won’t improve keeping
-After reaching his maximum a player will have increased each skill by 20 points, in the average, therefore the average total points increased in all skills will be 120 for keeper and 140 for everybody else

EXAMPLE: Consider a new youth defender, 16 y.o.. Suppose he receive 10% of his potential points, it means he will have a total of 14 points to increase on his skills. He plays some matches during the season and improves 3 times, earning 2, 4 and 5 points, respectively. There are 3 unused points that will be carried over to the next season. Now he turns 17 and receives more 5% of potential, 7 points. He has now reached 15% of his total potential points and has 10 points to improve. Let’s say he plays some matches and improves twice, 5 points in each. He has no more potential points left for this season, so even if he plays enough matches he won’t increase his skills until he is 18 y.o. and receive more potential points. And so his career goes.

For existing players all potential is already there, so the only thing that will change is the improvement speed as stated above. Some players who have already reached their maximum in the old system may start improving again in the new system.

We think these changes are for the best. There are lots of strategies that can be applied regarding player development right now. Some may think that coaching 10 is useless as it may improve players faster than necessary. It’s partially true for your own players, but if you hire a player from a team with low level coaching there may be a lot of potential to unleash. Also, high coaching will help you have top players around 25 years old instead of almost 30. For small teams this new system should also be better, as second division youths start at the same level as first division and those who can’t afford top level coaching won’t suffer from never getting top players, they will only take longer to become top players.

Some simple suggestions implemented:
-After sending a friendly invitation you stay in the same page instead of going to the team info page.
-Added team logo beside the team name on competition titles page

Loans cannot be terminated before the agreed period anymore. People could use this feature to transfer money between teams as you had to pay a fee when breaking loan contracts. If you guys feel this is an important feature we may put it back in the future along with a better control system.

Miscellaneous:
-players statistics will start being stored on friendlies and displayed on player statistics pages
-Match report: ball icon right beside players who scored
-Login page: link to our Orkut community

- Job Search Centers: This game area will help you in finding a job. It is also very useful for new players, as it is the first screen they will see.
- Reorganized Menus: The menu was reorganized in a more logical way. Icons are grouped in areas related to the manager, team and miscellaneous.

International Cups now have a qualifying round and a group phase! It has been asked a long time ago and we’ve been postponing it until we had enough countries, but then we decided that it would be fun to have these rounds right away. Due to this change the competitions will start 12 turns earlier, matches had already been moved. There may be some conflicting friendlies scheduled to the same turn, we’ll take care of that soon. Please let us know if we miss any conflicting match.

Youth players will receive twice as much potential points on season start and twice as much experience from matches. This will result in faster improvement while they’re in the youth academy, helping managers to identify potential stars earlier. As always, your feedback is very important to us.

FastTicker’s season tick surprise!
When FastTicker’s new season start in about 12 hours you’ll see the first of many interesting additions that represents the growth of RubySoccer. You may not see that right after entering the dimension, but if you navigate through our icons you’ll end up finding something new on a few pages. Let’s see who will be the first one to notice and post something in our Improvements Discussion topic ;)
p.s.: Even though I’ve exhaustively tested this during the week something can always go wrong when you put a new feature in the real environment. If something does happen I ask you guys to be patient cause any problem will be fixed as soon as we are available.

When listing a player for loan you’re now able to specify the minimum level of coaching desired and the maximum number of official matches that can be missed. Teams wishing to loan your player must have at least the level of coaching you specify. If after loaning your player their coaching is downgraded below that level the player will return to your team. The second condition is a way to guarantee your player will play official matches while loaned, if that’s your intention. If the player misses more matches than you wanted, he will return to your team.
For existing loans the minimum coaching level is set to 0 and maximum number of matches missed is not specified, meaning the player can miss any number of matches without penalty. We decided that it wouldn’t be fair to include loan clauses on existing loans, as they were not there when the player was loaned. Individual situations can be discussed in game.
Cheers!

It is now possible to block offers from your rivals when selling or loaning players out. A new clause can be added to the transfer or loan forbiding teams in the same league as you to make proposals. Everything is now ready for more clauses to be added in the future.

Friendlies statistics are not displayed in detail anymore in the player statistics page. Mixing it up with official matches statistics were making it harder to evaluate the player’s overall performance. The only information left about it is the total number of friendlies the player has played, displayed above the official matches statistics table.